Your Character's Name: Audra Harrison
The rain made the handle of my knife slippery in my hands. I held the sharp object close to my face so I could see my reflection. Disgusting. It wasn’t often a person got to look at themselves these days, and that was for the best. I was so dirty. My dirty blonde hair had spots of grey. I don’t know what the world was supposedly like before I was born, but I guessed that 25 year olds didn’t tend to have grey hair. At least it matched my eyes. It makes sense that my eyes are grey, they’ve seen a lot. I’ve lived three lifetimes in this short span of years, and it’s almost more than I can bear.
When I met Roen, Rabies and Ray, I thought things were looking up. They became my family, my friends. Roen was like the father I never had. That bastard left me with a guardian at an orphanage, which is better than my bitch of a mother. Apparently she wasn’t with my dad when he handed me over. He said she was alive but didn’t want to keep me. Good. I wouldn’t want her either. But Roen wasn’t like that. He had had a daughter, but she died. It’s not fair, ya know? Here’s a good man who actually wanted his daughter, and he couldn’t keep her. And these assholes who didn’t want me were able to give me up like it was nothing. They never even tried to find me. I got the feeling that everything Roen did was for his daughter, and that’s how it should be.
That’s why I thought of him as a father. Although his daughter died, that nurturing, loving part of him stayed alive. It’s crazy too, because he was a military man. I’d always thought military guys were cold and heartless. Not Roen. He actually cared about Rabies and me, and, as much as he complained about Ray, I know he had a soft spot for him too. When he left that day to go find his fellow armed forces friends, a part of me left with him. I thought that I would feel that same ditched feeling that I’ve carried with me my whole life because of my parents, but I didn’t. I knew he couldn’t sit still with us, and I knew he’d had enough of Ray and everything else we’d gone through.
It wasn’t a surprise when he didn’t come back. He said he’d bring back with him a small army, to assist in our rebuilding of the world and the fight against any enemies that may try to counteract our efforts. The others kept their faith; I didn’t. Sure, for a few days, if not weeks, I felt chances were good that he’d return. But that feeling quickly faded. As those weeks turned to years, we had to give up hope. The Detective, who wanted me to call him ‘D,’ grew angry.
When we’d first arrived at that theater and learned Ray’s real name was Percy and ‘The Detective’ was his father, we were in high spirits. Everything seemed to be coming together, and we had a stable, safe place to stay, and a mission to aid in. D was quite the sexual being, not unlike his offspring. I took a shining to him right away, of course. He was attractive and charming. I never thought he’d be more than a source of pleasure to me (and boy, he was), but he became more than that. He was my provider, my protector. He was at least half my age, but his face didn’t show it. He was strong, he was refined. He always made sure I had what I needed, and he gave me what I wanted. We lived like teenagers who thought they were invincible, with the world (or what was left of it) in the palms of our hands. We soared off our highs of rundown and wore the box springs into the floor. Things were good while we rode our expectations that the world would be beautiful and bountiful one day.
But then Roen never came back, and our plans fell apart. Something in D snapped one day, and suddenly he was overly aggressive.
“Let’s just rush them, shoot everything we have.” “Let’s steal one of the helicopters and just bomb them, take their belongings and rations.” “Let’s walk the earth and plant seeds everywhere we go, build up the world again.” “Let’s paint the ground and the trees and bring some color back to this place.”
His ideas made no sense, and they were destructive. We told him we couldn’t start rebuilding anything until our enemies were gone, and if he thought the four of us could kill them all, he was further gone than we thought. He soon shut down, and wouldn’t even open up to me. He would yell over little things, and he stopped sleeping with me. He left me to fend for myself in times of trouble and stopped providing. He stopped doing anything.
Percy did the same after awhile, but because of different circumstances. He and Rabies actually started a relationship, much to my surprise. I’m sure Rabies just figured why not, since they were there together, and D had taken a liking to me. Ray fell deeply in love with her, but I could tell the feeling was not mutual. In rare times of confidence between Rabies and me, she told me about the DJ from the Rave. She said she longed to see him again, that she missed how she felt around him. She never talked about what happened with him, or during that whole curator episode, and I was smart enough not to ask. She never told me how she felt about Ray, but those times she opened up to me about the DJ, I could only guess. When Ray kissed her, her eyes looked a million miles away, while Ray’s gleamed with pure ecstasy. Who knew such a strong man’s-man could be so soft when it came to love?
Rabies tried for awhile to adapt to our life. We lived how you’d expect people to live together in one place. We cleaned, we cooked, we talked, we laughed. We’d plan for attacks and for rebuilding. We’d discuss the past, the present, and the future. I was content. I never thought I’d be interested in such a domestic life, but for the first time, I felt I didn’t have to prove myself. I was being taken care of, and I was cared for. That was the most important thing to me. And I did something stupid because of it—I let my guard down. I shed my rough exterior and became someone I didn’t recognize. I was happy. I smiled. I didn’t fight, and I wasn’t the sarcastic smart-ass I always prided myself on being. Those few months I will always remember fondly.
Those joyful moments seemed to end abruptly. It was a morning like any other morning, until Rabies burst in my room, crying.
“GET OUT!” She screamed at D, who was still crying. He ran out of the room without another word. He would never be as stupid as to question a crying Rabies. I had never seen her cry, and I never thought I would. I sat up and didn’t say anything, I just waited for her to talk.
“I’m pregnant. It’s Ray’s.” I figured it was Ray’s, if anyone’s. I stayed silent. “I don’t want it. I don’t want it at all, I can’t have a baby. I don’t love him, and I don’t love this…this thing!” She pointed at her stomach.
I looked at her incredulously, my stomach in knots. “What are you going to do?” I asked meekly. I couldn’t believe she’d give up her child, and I felt for the unborn kid.
“I’m going to kill it. I’m not going to have it. Will you help me?” She looked at me, tears still welling in her yellow eyes. I had no response. I loved Rabies, as much as a woman could love another woman. She was a sister and a friend. I even felt some attraction to her. I would have helped her if she needed it in any other aspect, but coming from the life I came from…I couldn’t help her kill that baby. Although I felt that getting rid of it before it was alive to know about it was better than leaving them to grow up with anger and hate, I just couldn’t do it.
“Rabies…I…” I didn’t have to finish. She bit her lip and nodded her head, and walked out. I stayed out of the way for a while, of everyone. I didn’t know how I felt about anything. I stayed away for a week or two, until Percy burst in my room late one night. He was shaking me, and I woke up pissed.
“What the fuck, it’s the middle of the night!” I yelled, focusing on his face. It was scrunched with an emotion I’d never seen on his face—fear.
“It’s Rabies.” He said, and that was all I needed to know. She hadn’t told him about the baby, so he was more scared than me, not knowing why she was hurting. He took me to D’s office where Rabies was laying on the ground, shaking and hemorrhaging. She was crying and shaking her head. D had followed behind me, and ran away to grab one of his staff that stayed in the theater over night. One of them had some medical experience. While he was gone, I tried to calm him down.
“Why would she be bleeding?” He looked at me. “You’re a girl, do you know what could have caused this?” I struggled at that moment. I didn’t want to betray Rabies. I didn’t have to because Rabies started moaning.
“He’s dead, Ray.” She never referred to him as Percy. “She’s dead. IT’S dead. I can’t do this. I can’ t do this.” She started crying harder, clutching her stomach. Now, Percy was not a slow man. Her hand on her stomach, her bleeding, her saying it was dead. He understood. He left the room.
“Well fuck.” I said out loud, mostly to myself. I went over to Rabies and held her hand while we waited for D, who came in shortly with a round man with glasses. The man made us leave the room while he attended to Rabies.
The following days were difficult. No one was speaking to each other, and Rabies was in pain. Percy refused to serve her meals or to help her out of bed. I had to be her helper. She got better slowly, but surely. We still didn’t talk much while she was healing, and when she got better, Percy still ignored her. It took him a day or two to realize that she was gone.
Rabies had slipped out one night while the rest of us were sleeping. I figured she just needed to be alone for a night, but she never came back. Percy slipped into the same sad coma his father was in. It was depressing, and I couldn’t handle it. This life I was so lucky to have gotten was falling apart right in front of my eyes, and it was too painful to bear. I had to do what was best for me, and I told D and Percy I was leaving.
“I’m leaving.” I said bluntly to the men who were sitting reading in D’s office. They looked at me with sober eyes, not surprised.
“It was just a matter of time.” Ray said, looking back down at his book. D got up slowly and came over to me. He kissed me lightly on the lips and walked out of the room, no words spoken between us. Percy got up and held out his hand. I grinned and shook it.
“See ya later, Ray.” I said, knowing it would make him smile to hear me call him by his old name.
“See ya, Audra.” He sat back down and picked up his book. I watched him read for a couple more seconds, and then walked out of the theater. I fought with myself not to turn around and look at it, this place that had been my home for the past few years. I began walking to the terminal where we had gotten on the train to Seattle.
Memories rushed back. My life was as bleak as the world I lived in. I hoped that Roen was still alive, and I hoped that Rabies was okay. I also hoped that she was on her way to the DJ, where she would be happy. I hoped that Ray would get over her, and I hoped that D would snap out of whatever mood he was stuck in. I hoped all these things, and then I stopped thinking. I needed to take care of myself, for I was in the middle of a war ground. These streets were fair game for everyone, but they were also dangerous. Who knows who you’ll come across, or what they’ll want from you. I made it safely to the train station and got on the next one.
That leads me here; to some city I don’t know the name of, alone. I’m sharpening my knife to cut open a can of some mysterious slop before going to sleep on the floor of this dilapidated shack. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go somewhere else, or maybe I’ll stay here and try to find another group of people. I haven’t done that yet because I’m just starting to harden myself up again, and I don’t want anything interfering with that. Maybe I’m just meant to be a lone wolf. Either way, I’ll keep going for as long as I can.
The rain made the handle of my knife slippery in my hands. I held the sharp object close to my face so I could see my reflection. Disgusting. It wasn’t often a person got to look at themselves these days, and that was for the best. I was so dirty. My dirty blonde hair had spots of grey. I don’t know what the world was supposedly like before I was born, but I guessed that 25 year olds didn’t tend to have grey hair. At least it matched my eyes. It makes sense that my eyes are grey, they’ve seen a lot. I’ve lived three lifetimes in this short span of years, and it’s almost more than I can bear.
When I met Roen, Rabies and Ray, I thought things were looking up. They became my family, my friends. Roen was like the father I never had. That bastard left me with a guardian at an orphanage, which is better than my bitch of a mother. Apparently she wasn’t with my dad when he handed me over. He said she was alive but didn’t want to keep me. Good. I wouldn’t want her either. But Roen wasn’t like that. He had had a daughter, but she died. It’s not fair, ya know? Here’s a good man who actually wanted his daughter, and he couldn’t keep her. And these assholes who didn’t want me were able to give me up like it was nothing. They never even tried to find me. I got the feeling that everything Roen did was for his daughter, and that’s how it should be.
That’s why I thought of him as a father. Although his daughter died, that nurturing, loving part of him stayed alive. It’s crazy too, because he was a military man. I’d always thought military guys were cold and heartless. Not Roen. He actually cared about Rabies and me, and, as much as he complained about Ray, I know he had a soft spot for him too. When he left that day to go find his fellow armed forces friends, a part of me left with him. I thought that I would feel that same ditched feeling that I’ve carried with me my whole life because of my parents, but I didn’t. I knew he couldn’t sit still with us, and I knew he’d had enough of Ray and everything else we’d gone through.
It wasn’t a surprise when he didn’t come back. He said he’d bring back with him a small army, to assist in our rebuilding of the world and the fight against any enemies that may try to counteract our efforts. The others kept their faith; I didn’t. Sure, for a few days, if not weeks, I felt chances were good that he’d return. But that feeling quickly faded. As those weeks turned to years, we had to give up hope. The Detective, who wanted me to call him ‘D,’ grew angry.
When we’d first arrived at that theater and learned Ray’s real name was Percy and ‘The Detective’ was his father, we were in high spirits. Everything seemed to be coming together, and we had a stable, safe place to stay, and a mission to aid in. D was quite the sexual being, not unlike his offspring. I took a shining to him right away, of course. He was attractive and charming. I never thought he’d be more than a source of pleasure to me (and boy, he was), but he became more than that. He was my provider, my protector. He was at least half my age, but his face didn’t show it. He was strong, he was refined. He always made sure I had what I needed, and he gave me what I wanted. We lived like teenagers who thought they were invincible, with the world (or what was left of it) in the palms of our hands. We soared off our highs of rundown and wore the box springs into the floor. Things were good while we rode our expectations that the world would be beautiful and bountiful one day.
But then Roen never came back, and our plans fell apart. Something in D snapped one day, and suddenly he was overly aggressive.
“Let’s just rush them, shoot everything we have.” “Let’s steal one of the helicopters and just bomb them, take their belongings and rations.” “Let’s walk the earth and plant seeds everywhere we go, build up the world again.” “Let’s paint the ground and the trees and bring some color back to this place.”
His ideas made no sense, and they were destructive. We told him we couldn’t start rebuilding anything until our enemies were gone, and if he thought the four of us could kill them all, he was further gone than we thought. He soon shut down, and wouldn’t even open up to me. He would yell over little things, and he stopped sleeping with me. He left me to fend for myself in times of trouble and stopped providing. He stopped doing anything.
Percy did the same after awhile, but because of different circumstances. He and Rabies actually started a relationship, much to my surprise. I’m sure Rabies just figured why not, since they were there together, and D had taken a liking to me. Ray fell deeply in love with her, but I could tell the feeling was not mutual. In rare times of confidence between Rabies and me, she told me about the DJ from the Rave. She said she longed to see him again, that she missed how she felt around him. She never talked about what happened with him, or during that whole curator episode, and I was smart enough not to ask. She never told me how she felt about Ray, but those times she opened up to me about the DJ, I could only guess. When Ray kissed her, her eyes looked a million miles away, while Ray’s gleamed with pure ecstasy. Who knew such a strong man’s-man could be so soft when it came to love?
Rabies tried for awhile to adapt to our life. We lived how you’d expect people to live together in one place. We cleaned, we cooked, we talked, we laughed. We’d plan for attacks and for rebuilding. We’d discuss the past, the present, and the future. I was content. I never thought I’d be interested in such a domestic life, but for the first time, I felt I didn’t have to prove myself. I was being taken care of, and I was cared for. That was the most important thing to me. And I did something stupid because of it—I let my guard down. I shed my rough exterior and became someone I didn’t recognize. I was happy. I smiled. I didn’t fight, and I wasn’t the sarcastic smart-ass I always prided myself on being. Those few months I will always remember fondly.
Those joyful moments seemed to end abruptly. It was a morning like any other morning, until Rabies burst in my room, crying.
“GET OUT!” She screamed at D, who was still crying. He ran out of the room without another word. He would never be as stupid as to question a crying Rabies. I had never seen her cry, and I never thought I would. I sat up and didn’t say anything, I just waited for her to talk.
“I’m pregnant. It’s Ray’s.” I figured it was Ray’s, if anyone’s. I stayed silent. “I don’t want it. I don’t want it at all, I can’t have a baby. I don’t love him, and I don’t love this…this thing!” She pointed at her stomach.
I looked at her incredulously, my stomach in knots. “What are you going to do?” I asked meekly. I couldn’t believe she’d give up her child, and I felt for the unborn kid.
“I’m going to kill it. I’m not going to have it. Will you help me?” She looked at me, tears still welling in her yellow eyes. I had no response. I loved Rabies, as much as a woman could love another woman. She was a sister and a friend. I even felt some attraction to her. I would have helped her if she needed it in any other aspect, but coming from the life I came from…I couldn’t help her kill that baby. Although I felt that getting rid of it before it was alive to know about it was better than leaving them to grow up with anger and hate, I just couldn’t do it.
“Rabies…I…” I didn’t have to finish. She bit her lip and nodded her head, and walked out. I stayed out of the way for a while, of everyone. I didn’t know how I felt about anything. I stayed away for a week or two, until Percy burst in my room late one night. He was shaking me, and I woke up pissed.
“What the fuck, it’s the middle of the night!” I yelled, focusing on his face. It was scrunched with an emotion I’d never seen on his face—fear.
“It’s Rabies.” He said, and that was all I needed to know. She hadn’t told him about the baby, so he was more scared than me, not knowing why she was hurting. He took me to D’s office where Rabies was laying on the ground, shaking and hemorrhaging. She was crying and shaking her head. D had followed behind me, and ran away to grab one of his staff that stayed in the theater over night. One of them had some medical experience. While he was gone, I tried to calm him down.
“Why would she be bleeding?” He looked at me. “You’re a girl, do you know what could have caused this?” I struggled at that moment. I didn’t want to betray Rabies. I didn’t have to because Rabies started moaning.
“He’s dead, Ray.” She never referred to him as Percy. “She’s dead. IT’S dead. I can’t do this. I can’ t do this.” She started crying harder, clutching her stomach. Now, Percy was not a slow man. Her hand on her stomach, her bleeding, her saying it was dead. He understood. He left the room.
“Well fuck.” I said out loud, mostly to myself. I went over to Rabies and held her hand while we waited for D, who came in shortly with a round man with glasses. The man made us leave the room while he attended to Rabies.
The following days were difficult. No one was speaking to each other, and Rabies was in pain. Percy refused to serve her meals or to help her out of bed. I had to be her helper. She got better slowly, but surely. We still didn’t talk much while she was healing, and when she got better, Percy still ignored her. It took him a day or two to realize that she was gone.
Rabies had slipped out one night while the rest of us were sleeping. I figured she just needed to be alone for a night, but she never came back. Percy slipped into the same sad coma his father was in. It was depressing, and I couldn’t handle it. This life I was so lucky to have gotten was falling apart right in front of my eyes, and it was too painful to bear. I had to do what was best for me, and I told D and Percy I was leaving.
“I’m leaving.” I said bluntly to the men who were sitting reading in D’s office. They looked at me with sober eyes, not surprised.
“It was just a matter of time.” Ray said, looking back down at his book. D got up slowly and came over to me. He kissed me lightly on the lips and walked out of the room, no words spoken between us. Percy got up and held out his hand. I grinned and shook it.
“See ya later, Ray.” I said, knowing it would make him smile to hear me call him by his old name.
“See ya, Audra.” He sat back down and picked up his book. I watched him read for a couple more seconds, and then walked out of the theater. I fought with myself not to turn around and look at it, this place that had been my home for the past few years. I began walking to the terminal where we had gotten on the train to Seattle.
Memories rushed back. My life was as bleak as the world I lived in. I hoped that Roen was still alive, and I hoped that Rabies was okay. I also hoped that she was on her way to the DJ, where she would be happy. I hoped that Ray would get over her, and I hoped that D would snap out of whatever mood he was stuck in. I hoped all these things, and then I stopped thinking. I needed to take care of myself, for I was in the middle of a war ground. These streets were fair game for everyone, but they were also dangerous. Who knows who you’ll come across, or what they’ll want from you. I made it safely to the train station and got on the next one.
That leads me here; to some city I don’t know the name of, alone. I’m sharpening my knife to cut open a can of some mysterious slop before going to sleep on the floor of this dilapidated shack. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go somewhere else, or maybe I’ll stay here and try to find another group of people. I haven’t done that yet because I’m just starting to harden myself up again, and I don’t want anything interfering with that. Maybe I’m just meant to be a lone wolf. Either way, I’ll keep going for as long as I can.